Servo brakes, power steering and
handles quite nicely too with good acceleration. Not the cheapest car to
run, 18 mpg but cheap insurance makes up for this to some extent.

General History - Daimler V8

The first British manufacturer of motorised vehicles was a company
called Daimler, established in 1893. While the first cars were imported
from Germany, they had become emphatically British luxury carriages by
the Edwardian era, and became the adopted transport for the Royal Family
after the First World War. After the Second World War, management
weakness and a somewhat confused and directionless model range brought
the company to its knees, and it was bought by Jaguar in May 1960.

Initially the range remained unchanged, offering as it did models that
did not compete directly with the existing offerings from Browns Lane,
and it was not until 1962 that attention was drawn back to the marque by
Jaguar's release of the V8 250.

The V8 250 was essentially a
Jaguar Mk II hull mated to the 2½ litre vee eight used in Daimler's
SP250, and the Coventry firm earned accusations of badge engineering,
the pundits feeling justified in their predictions of two years earlier.
This was largely unfair, however; true, the new Daimler's body and
mechanicals were essentially Jaguar, but it suited the Daimler mould
with characteristically effortless performance matched with easy luxury.
With 140bhp, the engine was already three years old but, coupled with a
Type 35 Borg-Warner automatic gearbox (manual was not available), it
could push the modest saloon up to 110mph and return 20mpg over a long
journey.

Production continued into 1969, and the
model's life drew to an end after just over 17,600 had been
manufactured.

Price on Launch
£1,785

Daimler 2 ½ Litre V8 version of the MK 2
launched Earls Court, October 1962
3.8, 3.4 and 2.4 Jags at the time were in production

Coinciding with the Jaguar facelift and
model revisions (the last of the Jaguar MK 2 models with minor
specification revisions and new names 240, 340) the newly named Daimler
V8 250 launched at the Earls Court Show in October 1967: I don't know
the nitty gritty of the revisions but the most obvious is the thinner
bumper compared to the earlier models.